NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents. 

Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls. 

The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance. 

In one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In one instance, the NSA decided that it need not report the unintended surveillance of Americans. A notable example in 2008 was the interception of a “large number” of calls placed from Washington when a programming error confused the U.S. area code 202 for 20, the international dialing code for Egypt, according to a “quality assurance” review that was not distributed to the NSA’s oversight staff.

These are more disturbing facts that we would not even know about unless Edward Snowden had stolen them, and then disseminated them to journalists. And it cannot be argued that knowing this is NOT important to the American people, or that without Snowden we ever WOULD have known about it.

However, as I have mentioned before, Snowden abdicated his right to be called a heroic whistle blower when he fled to, first China, and then Russia.

It also appears that the relationship between Wiki-leaks, Russia, and Snoweden is convoluted and suspicious at best. 

This from Business Insider: 

Ever since the 30-year-old ex-Booz Allen contractor got on a flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, Russia and WikiLeaks have been working parallel to each other. 

On June 23, after the U.S. voided Snowden's passport while he was in Hong Kong, WikiLeaks tweeted that the organization "assisted Mr. Snowden's political asylum in a democratic country, travel papers ans [sic] safe exit from Hong Kong." 

That was followed by the update that "Mr. Snowden is currently over Russian airspace accompanied by WikiLeaks legal advisors." 

It turned out that Assange convinced Ecuador's consul in London to provide a travel document requesting that authorities allow Snowden to travel to Ecuador "for the purpose of political asylum." The country's president subsequently said the document was "completely invalid." 

When Snowden arrived in Moscow with void travel papers, all signs suggest that Russia's domestic intelligence service (i.e. FSB) took control of him. 

That day a radio host in Moscow "saw about 20 Russian officials, supposedly FSB agents, in suits, crowding around somebody in a restricted area of the airport," according to Anna Nemtsova of Foreign Policy. 

WikiLeaks, meanwhile, insisted that Snowden was "not being 'debriefed' by the FSB." 

Nevertheless, Snowden's FSB-linked Moscow lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, has been speaking for Snowden ever since Snowden accepted all offers for support and asylum on July 12.

You know Snowden COULD have been a real national symbol for privacy concerns in this country. He could have actually been the hero that so many want to believe that he is. 

He could have been those things, but no more.